A Dangerous Crossing--A Novel

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  “His injury resembled strangulation. When we asked him to explain, he claimed he hadn’t been attacked.”

  Esa noticed his mother’s concern. He decided not to share his theory: it was possible the man’s boat had capsized. His children might have panicked in the water, clawing at their father’s throat. He may have wanted to protect his children from the knowledge that they were the ones who had harmed him.

  “He didn’t tell you anything else?”

  Emily’s reply was dry. “A Syrian man is not about to discuss his personal issues with a group of unknown women.”

  Esa glanced at his mother. “I thought there was a man in your group. Someone who runs your errands.”

  Emily laughed at this, a satirical sound of amusement. “He’s really no help at all, you know how reclusive he is.”

  Surprised, Khattak said, “I do? How?”

  Emily’s sharp glance quizzed him. “I thought Nathan Clare was your friend.”

  * * *

  When Emily had gone, Khattak took a seat at the breakfast bar while his mother fussed about the kitchen. His eye fell on the portrait of his wife, a photograph he’d never felt he could ask his mother to remove. He swallowed a familiar knot of pain.

  “What can I make you to eat?”

  “Nothing, Ami. I had dinner with Nate.”

  “He came to see me while you were in Iran.”

  “Did you ask him to join your group?” He found it strange that Nate hadn’t mentioned it.

  “He insisted when I told him about it. He thinks he’s been given too much, so he wants to help.”

  “He personally funds Woman to Woman.”

  His mother smiled at him. “That’s not enough for Nathan. You know how he is, Esa.” She waited before she added, “I’m glad to have him back.”

  Esa gave her hand a squeeze. “I am, too.”

  He’d missed his friend. Nate may have kept his counsel because he feared Esa’s censure. Perhaps he thought Esa would suspect him of trying to ingratiate himself. But the truth was simpler and worthier of Nate. His bond with Esa’s mother had deepened with his own parents’ deaths. The consideration he showed her was a mark of his friendship with Esa, but also of his sense of loss.

  Esa felt a quick stab of fear. If he didn’t find Audrey, Nate would lose everyone he loved.

  His mother sensed his concern.

  “What is it, Esa?” She sounded afraid. “Is something wrong with Nate?”

  He denied it at once. He wouldn’t add to her worries by making her share in his fear.

  12

  Athens, Greece

  Rachel was finding it hard to believe where she was ending up. A few weeks ago, she’d been in Iran. Now she’d just landed in Athens, where meetings with the local police had been arranged.

  The bodies of Aude Bertin and Sami al-Nuri had been moved to a morgue in the city. After she’d had a shower and a change of clothes, a member of the Greek police force was to take her to the morgue, while Khattak handled an Interpol interview with the discretion he was known for.

  She wasn’t quite sure what Nate would be up to, but she didn’t mind the division of labor. She knew what to do at a morgue. She wasn’t quite sure how to handle cross-jurisdictional issues, and her blunt style of engagement might not go over well with their Greek counterparts.

  She stretched out her shoulders in the comfortable expanse of the limo Nate had hired. He wasn’t ostentatious with his wealth, but he did take certain things for granted. The Eleftherios Venizelos airport had been crowded: it was Greece’s largest and busiest airport, a regional hub that served as the base for Aegean Airlines. Rachel had expected to compete for one of the dozens of yellow taxis that circled the airport in a loop. Instead, Nate had hired a private driver in a very expensive car, who was depositing them at their hotel.

  She could smell the sea in the air as they passed the broken arches of a set of oak-gold ruins, and shifted in her seat to see if she could catch a view of the Parthenon at the peak of a stone-studded hill. Across from her, Khattak’s eyes were closed. Rachel assumed he’d been to Greece before, and wasn’t quite as awestruck as she was by the wide boulevards, the vast roar of traffic, or the commingled sight of cypresses and olive groves.

  She looked up to find Nate watching her. There was worry and fear in his face—the emotions she would expect from a man whose sister was missing in deeply disturbing circumstances. She wanted to offer reassurance, but didn’t think he’d welcome it, not after the way he’d rebuked her in Ottawa. He hadn’t spoken to her on the private flight he’d chartered, but then he hadn’t spoken to Khattak either.

  For an hour or two on the plane, Khattak had read through Nate’s recovered e-mails, while passing on to her the task of combing through Ruksh and Audrey’s correspondence.

  She’d fallen asleep quickly; she’d get back to the task after her meeting at the morgue.

  “Will you be waiting for us in the hotel lobby?”

  Nate shook his head, his pale gold hair falling into his eyes. He spoke quietly so as not to wake Khattak.

  “I’m meeting Sehr. The four of us can have dinner at the hotel. By then we should be able to come to some conclusions.”

  Rachel hoped that would be the case. But what she understood from Khattak was that Interpol was pressing them for answers, rather than the reverse.

  * * *

  The pathologist at the morgue was a friendly man who was six inches shorter than Rachel, and where Rachel was strong and well muscled, the excess weight on his body was distributed so that he gave an impression of compactness. His English was fluent, his accent deep and melodic. Keeping up a steady flow of conversation, he told Rachel as many facts about Canada as he could pull from his memory.

  Rachel’s smile was warm and genuine. She knew it was Dr. Giannopoulos’s way of making her feel welcome. He was now quoting facts about Chris Chelios to her, miming the motion of a hockey stick. Nothing was guaranteed to get past Rachel’s defenses faster.

  “You come from the place of ice hockey, yes?”

  Rachel happily agreed. If nations could be distilled to their essence, and Canada’s was hockey, what would Greece’s be? Olive groves? The Acropolis? Or the foundations of democracy?

  Dr. Giannopoulos explained that the city morgue was actually a hospital mortuary attached to a pathology lab. He led the way through the cool, dim halls to a bank of refrigerated cabinets in a spacious, well-organized room adjacent to a smaller viewing chamber for relatives, police, and others, usually medical trainees.

  He pulled a clipboard down from the wall and read through his written conclusions. Then he pulled Sami al-Nuri’s body from its cold chamber. Together, they viewed his face in silence.

  It was the boy from the photograph provided by Sanctuary Syria. The fragile bones of his face and his fine, slender jaw suggested he hadn’t grown into manhood; his neck and shoulders hadn’t yet acquired adult musculature. His hair was curly and thick, his face white and without distinction, as was common to many of the bodies Rachel had seen: the experience of life erased by the moment of death.

  Dr. Giannopoulos gave her an anxious look. “Are you certain you want to see the rest?”

  Confused, Rachel said, “The gunshot wound, you mean? I do need to.”

  He shook his head. “There’s a lot more to this poor boy than his cause of death.”

  He pulled back the sheet that covered Sami’s body with a prayerful murmur. Instantly, Rachel knew why.

  The boy’s body was scarred and bruised, marked and discolored from his sternum to his toes. Puckered round scars that peppered his torso looked like cigarette burns. There were jagged slashes through his flesh, wounds that hadn’t been stitched … they looked more like they’d been cauterized. Some of the flesh looked sick, as if it had begun decaying long before his death. There were other signs Rachel recognized: broken bones that had never had the chance to knit or be repaired.

  And the boy’s testicles were missing.

&nb
sp; She choked back the sob that rose in her throat, casting the good doctor a horrified glance. He was still praying to himself.

  “Nearly all his major bones were broken,” he told her, pointing to bruising on the thighs. He twitched up the sheet, his hand above the gunshot wound. Feeling sick at the wholesale torture inflicted on the boy, Rachel forced herself to focus on the wound at the heart.

  “Shot at close range?”

  Sounding sad, he answered, “Very close. Not more than two feet. You see the precision of the shooter’s aim.”

  Rachel accepted this. “Is there anything else I should know? Anything that’s medically relevant?”

  Dr. Giannopoulos shook his head. “A single shot. It would have killed him instantly.”

  He showed her Aude Bertin’s body in the next cabinet, and here Rachel was able to tell a little more from the body. She’d been an older woman, her light brown hair cropped short, her eyebrows and fingernails groomed, the slight groove of a scar denting her upper lip. Her face was frozen not in an expression of fear or surprise, but rather in defiance. Her wound was similar to the boy’s, precise and small, directly above the heart.

  “We have the bullets,” Dr. Giannopoulos told her.

  Rachel nodded. “Can you tell me this? I didn’t see the bodies before they were removed. Could you tell whether the boy or the woman was shot first?”

  Dr. Giannopoulos nodded. “The woman, I think, though that is not an official conclusion.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  He turned over Aude Bertin’s left arm. There was distinct bruising along the forearm and shoulder.

  “Her body was found to the right of the boy’s, so close together they were nearly inseparable. But hers a little in front.”

  Rachel studied the bruising for herself. She could see the distinct grip of a thumb just below the left shoulder, and at the wrist, a tight band of red that was now discolored.

  “I see,” she said. “You think she tried to protect him, shield his body somehow.”

  “And then she was pulled aside and shot before the boy was. Bang bang. Two shots. No other bullets at the scene.”

  It was possible, Rachel thought. If the boy had been shot first, Aude Bertin would have had the chance to reach for her gun. She’d been armed, her gun found with her body.

  “What else can you tell me, Dr. Giannopoulos? Was anything taken from the agent’s body? Were there any other injuries, any question of drug use?”

  She’d been thinking about the detailed list of pharmaceuticals on Woman to Woman’s requisition list.

  The little doctor shrugged. “This will take me a while, Miss Getty. And I cannot keep both the bodies. The French government has asked for their agent’s body to be released. They want a separate report compiled by their own examiners. This poor lady is about to board a flight.”

  It felt terribly intrusive to do so, but in light of this information, Rachel thought she should snap a few pictures to review. She didn’t expect that Khattak would be sending her to France.

  Dr. Giannopoulos was reluctant to allow this. Rachel talked him round with a promise of discretion.

  When she was finished, he shooed her out of the room, back to his private office.

  “I can only tell you about the body. Your other questions, you must speak to the police. They will tell you about the scene.”

  “You would have photographed the scene,” Rachel said hopefully. The doctor shook his head.

  “I am for the body,” he told her again. “The police captain will tell you the rest.”

  “Who’s in charge of the local investigation? Lesvos police or Athens?”

  Dr. Giannopoulos arched his heavy eyebrows, giving his face a look of comical consternation. “No, no,” he said. “This investigation has been taken over by the International Police Cooperation Division. Because of you, I think.” He made a shoving motion with his hands. “This will not be easy. Not for our Captain Nicolaides.”

  “Why is that?”

  “The Interpols,” he said. “They are calling the shots.”

  * * *

  Rachel took a break in her hotel room. She didn’t want to eat, sickened by her discoveries. She drank a bottle of water as she waited for Nate and Khattak to return. They were staying at the ruinously overpriced King George Hotel. Rachel pinched herself just to make sure it was real.

  Her room was so luxurious and so richly appointed that she was afraid to place her suitcase on the bed. The windows were open and a glorious April breeze carried the scent of the Aegean into her room, along with the evocative perfume of blossoms Rachel couldn’t identify. They were thick and curling, their petals feathery as they drifted over her balcony.

  She settled herself in a plush white armchair, her laptop open on her knees, her eyes taking in deep gold curtains brushing daffodil walls. In the other room, the bathroom was paneled in original Greek marble; she’d promised herself a soak in the tub at the end of the night.

  She couldn’t have imagined such luxury; she’d only seen it on reality television. She hadn’t envied it or felt its absence. And she wasn’t sure she felt comfortable with it, especially in light of what she’d just seen—and knowing they were headed to the camps. The contrast was too cruel, the luxury unmerited and wasteful.

  She wrote up her conversation with Dr. Giannopoulos for Khattak to review, trying not to betray her sense of horror, and then, sipping at her water, she read over the bulk of Audrey’s correspondence with Ruksh, making additional notes.

  A vein of affectionate humor ran through the e-mails as the two women discussed the challenge of keeping up with each other across time zones, or pondered the kind of clothes Audrey should have packed for Greece.

  As Ruksh had told Esa, much of the e-mail simply contained Audrey’s follow-up questions about the well-being of the families who had arrived in Canada. Ruksh would respond with a brief account of their health and a diagnosis of the obstacles before them. Rachel found herself warming to Audrey and Ruksh in a way she hadn’t before: despite their teasing and their occasional self-absorption, both women were concerned about the welfare of new arrivals. Both took an interest in the needs of individual cases. And both made suggestions on how resettlement could be humanized. Ruksh wrote of not making the sponsorships seem like charity, though Woman to Woman held all sponsorship funds in trust. Occasionally the friends disagreed, but one or the other would eventually be convinced of her friend’s point of view.

  Finally Rachel found the reference to Sami al-Nuri she was searching for. It was more detailed than Ruksh had suggested to Khattak, though to be fair, it had been sent in December. Rachel read it several times, then she sat back in her chair to do a little thinking about the warning Audrey had sent Ruksh.

  Dania is his sister. She’s the only one who can help him, the only one who knows how valuable he is. He trusts her. Please tell her Sami has run out of time. Tell her he’s waiting for help. Tell her she has to convince her husband. There is no other way.

  So why had Dania denied knowing Sami? How could she have been unaffected by news of her brother’s death? Khattak had guessed she might be lying, but hadn’t been able to determine her motive for doing so.

  Rachel looked for a reference to plane tickets. There were frequent discussions of how Woman to Woman could best direct its funds, but no specific mention of Audrey needing tickets. Nate had told Khattak that he’d booked Audrey an open ticket back in December. So why had Audrey told Ruksh she needed money for travel? Where had she been planning to go? Home to Toronto? Or somewhere that wasn’t on their radar yet?

  While searching for the exact reference, Rachel came across the reason Ruksh had asked Khattak not to read her e-mails. At the end of January, Ruksh had written Audrey an e-mail that shed some light on her personal feelings about her brother’s involvement in her life. It was strongly worded and harsh with pain—reading it brought a lump to Rachel’s throat. But Ruksh’s message also stirred in her a sense of anger at how unfa
ir Ruksh was to Khattak, how she saw only her own interests. Rachel was most struck by the e-mail’s conclusion. It was so wounding, she knew she’d do her utmost to keep Khattak from seeing it.

  What am I supposed to do about Esa? He wants absolution, he calls and writes to the point I can’t stand it. I don’t need his shabby excuses. He works against my happiness every chance he gets. Do you know why I’m not there with you? He convinced Ami I’d get into trouble—she begged me not to go. She cried her heart out. There’s no room in my heart to forgive him. After what happened with Hassan? I wish Esa was dead.

  Audrey’s response was brutal. Rachel liked her all the better for it. It was the kind of thing she’d have written herself.

  Shut up, Ruksh. You didn’t care about Hassan, you do love Esa. Don’t ever let me hear you say something that outrageous again.

  Rachel closed her laptop and set it aside. She rubbed the cool neck of her water bottle against her overheated skin. She’d never told Khattak much about her parents, and she knew he also preferred to keep his affairs to himself. But he had told her about Ruksh, and he spoke of his sister with a mixture of respect and indulgence. He loved both his sisters deeply. He’d told her he cherished his family more closely in the aftermath of his wife’s death. She could picture how much his sister’s words would hurt him. She knew something about that kind of pain. Rachel’s mother had once told her she would have suffered less if Rachel had disappeared instead of Zachary.

  Rachel cursed in the quiet of her hotel room. “Stupid bloody fool. She doesn’t know her brother at all. He could be killed in the line of duty, then she’d have that on her conscience.”

  She muttered a few other choice phrases. With a sigh, she opened her laptop again and began to make notes. She typed up each reference to Sami al-Nuri, noting the dates Audrey had raised queries, putting down words to see if they formed a pattern. In one of the last e-mails sent before her disappearance, Audrey discussed funds for a boat—except the reference wasn’t explicit.

  You know that big purchase I hoped for? Nate turned me down. But I met a guy who says he can help me out, I won’t have to break the bank. I think this is going to work. Pray for me, Ruksh, because I’ve been taking on a lot … maybe too much. But you know me—always tilting at windmills. Let’s hope I don’t get blown away. And keep your eye on Nate, in case I’m not around. Make sure he doesn’t blow this thing with Rachel. Love you, be good, and for God’s sake, patch up this stupid thing with Esa. To you your Overlord, to me, my Bumbling Lamb.